Artificial intelligence era calls for career flexibility, not a perfect choice: Sanjeev Sanyal

CHENNAI: Students should focus on flexibility rather than searching for a perfect or predetermined career path in an increasingly uncertain world shaped by artificial intelligence, technological disruption, and changing economic opportunities, said Sanjeev Sanyal, member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister.

Speaking to IIT-Madras Prof Mahesh Panchagnula on ‘The Prof. Mahesh Podcast’, Sanyal said career decisions were made amid uncertainty, where future outcomes could not always be predicted. He encouraged students to experiment, persist through difficult phases and remain open to changing course as circumstances evolve.

Sanyal distinguished between risk, where probabilities can be estimated, and uncertainty, where future outcomes cannot reliably be assigned probabilities. The consequences of an early career decision, he said, often become clear only in retrospect.

“I am actually playing on flexibility more than direction,” Sanyal said, referring to his own journey from studying economics at Shri Ram College, University of Delhi, to Oxford, financial markets, writing, and public policy. He said his career was not the result of a predetermined plan and that he had focused at various stages on eliminating options he did not want to pursue while remaining flexible about where those choices might lead.

He also cautioned against asking young people to identify their lifelong passion at 18, saying their limited exposure to available opportunities could make such expectations an unnecessary burden. Instead, he encouraged students to experiment with different activities, eliminate paths they disliked and remain open to discovering new interests.

On AI, Sanyal cautioned against assuming that even experts could reliably predict how the technology would affect jobs and industries over the coming years. Rather than attempting to predict every consequence, he said individuals and institutions should develop the ability to adapt as AI evolves.

He also suggested that higher education may increasingly need to support people returning to education repeatedly throughout their careers as technologies, industries and professional roles change.